"To end his eternal suffering, he must slay one thousand enemies!" Manji, a ronin warrior of feudal Japan, has been cursed with immortality. To rid himself of this curse and end his life of misery, he must slay one thousand evil men! His quest begins when a young girl seeks his help in taking revenge on her parents' killers... and his quest won't end until the blood of a thousand has spilled!

Art: Top notch. The best 'realistic manga' styles I've seen in a while. On par in its own way with Takehiko Inoue's art, who I consider to be King of this style.

Plot: Very interesting. Our leading man, Manji, was given immortality through regeneration, wants to be mortal again, and so decides to kill 1000 bad guys to compensate for the 100 innocents he's killed. Our leading lady, Rin, seeks revenge for the senseless murder or her parents and annihilation of her dojo's sword style by the Ittou-ryou school, and enlists Manji as a bodyguard in order to do this. They proceed to fight members of the Ittou-ryou and come across other factions and individuals with different and/or similar goals and interesting things happen. One great strength is how none of the opposing sides are definitely 'villains'. They all have their individual reasons for doing what they do, and these motivations are what bring them to conflict rather than 'good guy vs bad guy'. The occasional twists are nice too. Fairly simple overall, though the plot is laid out rather basically from the first few chapters.

Characters: Fantastic. As I mentioned before, one of the strengths is that very few of these characters are definitely 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. There are a few exceptions of course, and they are dealt with accordingly. The character interactions are always good, a surprising number of romances/couples as well. One small criticism about Manji is that he barely changes, though this serves as a foil to Rin's development and possibly serves to remind us of his immortal and unchanging body. The fact that the main antagonists (almost all of them really) are characters you get to know rather intimately is a good way of making sure that you don't see them as black and while bad/good guys. Which is one of the themes of the manga, it's not a mindless killy killy samurai manga, it has heart. Rin's struggles over her quest for revenge, Manji's reluctance to define who is 'evil' so he can kill a thousand evil men as well as the overlaying theme of forgiveness, redemption and all that good stuff.This isn't a macho-fest full of dudes playing with swords while the girls bandage them up afterwards, by the way. Arguably the strongest fighter in the manga is female, there are several strong female characters and fighters, and the point at which Rin springs Manji from jail is one of my favourite moments in manga.

Battles: Top Notch. Beautifully drawn, certainly gets better the further in and even the fact that Manji is an immortal doesn't retract from the tension. His immortality is not a Super-Sayian-like invincibility booster, there are still ways to kill him, disable him and defeat him, but the regeneration makes it a lot more work than it would have been. It certainly isn't a 'seen one swordfight, seen them all' scenario either, there are a diverse cast of warriors each with different styles and often completely varied (and often fictional) weapons, and this leads to a battle manga that stays fresh.

Offpoint: One common criticism is that Manji relies to heavily on his regeneration and not his actual skill. I'd like to point out that in battle, your basic reaction and the way you move ultimately stems from your instinctive fear of death. Manji still feels pain, but he doesn't really have a life-or-death reason to block a sword thrust to the gut anymore, I would argue that his regenerative abilities have pampered him and made hims somewhat soft - and that this is why he takes so many hits when he's supposed to be skilled.

And a little warning.

Maturity/gore: This is a seinen for a reason. The fact that it's a samurai manga should be caution enough, much heads being lopped off, dismembered limbs, geysers of blood (though not to the point of ridiculousness) and later, it gets worse. There's this one character who is definitely one of the 100% evil characters. He rapes girls while cutting them up and you get to see this. There is also a prolonged rape/interrogation of one of the characters, and an arc more or less given over to chopping people up for experiments. This is generally handled much better and is not as bad as some other seinen (Wolf Guy, Hellsing, Freezing, Berserk to name a few) but if you really, really don't want to go through these scenes, don't begin reading.

Overall one of my favourite and most well-balanced manga I've read, once I've finished it, I'll go take a gander at some of the mangaka's other work.

One of the manga with the BEST and beautiful artworks of all time. The plot is brilliant and it flows easily, the funky characters who are all recognizable and very memorable in the roles they played and who they are in general, and the absolute detailed setting which makes readers feel they are in Japan along with the characters. It makes you understand where the time of place is, the action doesn't get you confused, and best of all, you don't get lost in their fighting--you get MORE into it. The artwork comes off as if they were only sketches with cross-hatching as shadows and what not, but the weird part is that it gives character movements a natural portrayal and fluidity. This is definitely very effective. The ending could have been better.

I've read 15 volumes and I will break down what my views are on this manga.

Firstly and most importantly the art is incredibly good, definately up there among the greats of this genre. Only gripe I had was on a rare ocassion some action scenes were hard to follow.

The plot is great, it's detailed and unpredictable, but kinda tries too hard creativly at some points which can confuse readers. Only real gripe I had was there were some long scene of discussions that they could have done without.

The characters are easy to understand and are built up with emotional value. You will feel for the main female lead and you will admire the main male lead. Friendship and mateship is more dominate than romance in this manga, even though there are glimses of the main lead's relationship going beyond friends.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, not as great as I expected but over all worth the read and definately will be something I'll keep track of with releases. I can't rate this high for the fact that I have read vagabond and that is still superior in my opinion.

Your friendly neighbour Shavone.

p.s The anime series for this manga which comes out in July 2008 will definately be a must watch! I have a good feeling it will be exciting to watch.

Spanning over many years, the story doubtlessly deviated from its original course (relatively quickly anyway) and Samura didn't care much for world build or history, but I do not think these two aspects are truly relevant. What really matters in this work to my eyes is the exploration of violence, revenge, hate and related themes. On that front Samura does a fairly good job. To be honest, it's nothing really that deep or profound. But exactly because it's rather simple and elementary, it allows to be understood easily by anyone. And even more than the themes themselves, what really makes the greatness of this manga is the way they are expressed, so in one word the art. Yet I am not praising just the art in itself (which, mind you, it actually is already great in itself, if you ask me), but rather the way Samura uses it to express simple and yet never exhausted themes. This work to me is somewhere in-between a proper manga and an artbook. The story is, as often is the case in many manga, little more than a pretext for the author to portray certain scenes. The fact that Samura doesn't care much for historical accuracy only goes to show his purely aesthetic reasons for choosing his setting.It's worth noting how Manji, the supposed MC, fades into the background more and more as the story goes on, and he turns out to be more of a spectator than an actor of the story, which pretty much suits his existence as an immortal that is something other than human, and this sense of alienation is further reinforced in the final chapters. His main playmate is Shira, which in body and mind is a freak just like Manji.The greatest expression of Samura's art in this work is probably Makie, a triumph of violence, coldness and sensuality, mixed in with a sense of ephemerality and caducity, faced nonetheless with a will of steel that accepts mortality and misery, and yet is not willing to give in until the very end.Kagimura and Anotsu are two others great characters. Anotsu is unable to accept the contradictions of what happens to the martial arts when they are reduced to a mere formal system that cares more about etiquette than efficiency. His Itto-ryu has only one single rule, and that is the prohibition of overnumbering the opponents. This differentiates it from being a mere no holds barred, since those who fight without rules only care about the outcome while those who abid by the Itto-ryu's rule are fighting mainly against themselves in a battle of self-improvement. What Anotsu care about is the personal growth in real battle situations. A very down to earth and elementary, even primitive, drive: the desire for true personal power founded on one's own ability rather than depending on other people. Yet a desire that contradicts the very nature of what human society has become, and hence Anotsu wishes to change that same society and show to its members the value of his pursuits, to show them how weak their illusionary power dependent on technology and bureaucracy actually is. And of all this Kagimura, the warrior who became a bureaucrat himself, is well aware and what drives him the most in his hunt for Anotsu is not the orders he receives from above, but rather his envy for what Anotsu is trying to accomplish, something that Kagimura desired in his heart of hearts but never dared to pursue. Though admittedly Kagimura is conflicted, because he still sees value in the society that Anotsu wishes to destroy. That's why he ultimately chose to sacrifice his own personal pursuits as a warrior for the sake of order and stability, for the sake of his family.There is no black or white and there is no clear answer in the end. Even knowing the pointlessness of her own revenge, Rin can't help but wishing to go through with it nonetheless; even knowing the pointlessness of his social struggle, Anotsu doesn't put down his sword until the very end; even knowing the pointlessness of his battle against the already fallen Itto-ryu, Kagimura doesn't stop chasing Anotsu. The feeling that we get from the whole picture is that of a human life made up of things that are cherished and that are ultimately lost, yet we can never let go of them even if it's hopeless to try to grasp them, and so we keep fighting a losing battle not for the sake of the future but rather for the sake of the past, because if we gave up everything we had done up until now would lose all meaning.

at first i thought i wouldnt be interested, thiking it would be your typical samurai manga where the protaganist just fights and fights but the characters have so much depth and the story itself is engaging. you just gotta be patient to read though the chapters since i think it's gonna be a long manga and i aint complainin...;p

plus the romance in this manga beats any shoujo/ josei i've ever read. it's not so obvious that it clouds the action in it but i really do feel their love!

The biggest flaw with Blade of the Immortal is that its very apparent that the author got bored with his story and had no clear plan as to how it would unfold. Out of the numerous characters that show up, there really aren't too many that stand out story wise. The story's original premise is discarded pretty early and too many arcs feel pieced together rather than leading to an overarching point or theme. Even the setting itself isn't fully explored because, as he reveals in the book's commentaries, he honestly isn't that much a fan of historical period pieces. There should have been much more of a universe to this long story that is never fully expanded on.

With that said, the art is simply breathtaking, if inconsistent. Like the story, the author gets bored of certain aspects and changes things without planning, such as the death murals going away. When Samura is at his best, when he's drawing a character he clearly enjoys to draw like Makie; his attention to detailed poses and motion is unparalleled. But when he's drawing yet another Manji vs. mook fight, he tends to slip up. But even his lazier art is better than most's full efforts. At times, it feels he invents new characters just because he wanted to draw something fresh. Or worse, he invents out of place scenes so that he can blatantly draw his various fetishes.

Blade of the Immortal was Samura Hiroaki's first work and it really shows in artwork and especially his storytelling. You see a maturation process happening but also spikes of disinterest in his own work. He was able to gut it out to a mostly satisfying conclusion but reading it as a whole provides a very uneven experience. Fights are sometimes spectacular and sometimes mundane. Characters sometimes drastically change or stagnate without proper setup. But Blade of the Immortal's high point are high enough to consider it a masterpiece.

Its really worth it. Its a really good story, but its long and can take some time to get in to. There is some hints of romance. The main character is a one hell of a bad ass and you will enjoy the fights. The art is superb. I usaly dont care about the art as long as the story is good, but in this manga the art is really something.